1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an ink-jet printing apparatus that ejects ink onto a record medium for recording thereon.
2. Description of the Related Art
An ink-jet recording apparatus is an apparatus that causes ink ejected from nozzles formed in heads to adhere to paper to thereby form a desired image on the paper. In such an ink-jet recording apparatus, a belt conveying mechanism is sometimes used as a mechanism for conveying the paper serving as a recording medium.
In an ink-jet recording apparatus, when the state where ink is not ejected from the nozzles continues for a long period of time, the surfaces of the ink meniscuses become dry and poor ink ejection arises. In order to prevent this, it is necessary to periodically conduct so-called flushing in which the ink is forcibly ejected from the nozzles towards a location other than the paper when printing is not being conducted.
In the case of a serial-type ink-jet recording apparatus where the heads reciprocatingly move in a direction orthogonal to the conveying direction of the paper, flushing can be rapidly conducted by moving the heads to a position offset from the paper conveying path when printing is not being conducted. However, in the case of a line-type ink-jet recording apparatus where the heads are fixedly disposed along the direction orthogonal to the paper conveying direction, for example, when the aforementioned belt conveying mechanism is adopted as the paper conveying mechanism, it is necessary to move an ink receiving member to a position facing the heads after the belt conveying mechanism or the heads has/have been retreated. Therefore, the rapid flushing is difficult to carry out.
Thus, techniques have been developed that enable rapid flushing in a line-type ink-jet recording apparatus employing a belt conveying mechanism. In an example, an opening is disposed in a portion of the conveyor belt, and a recovery mechanism including an absorber is disposed at a position facing the heads under the conveyor belt. When the opening in the conveyor belt is below the heads, ink is ejected towards the opening and absorbed by the recovery mechanism.
Due to such an arrangement of the above technique in which the recovery mechanism is disposed confronting the heads under the conveyor belt, a flexure prevention member such as a flat plate cannot be disposed on a substrate undersurface of the conveyor belt confronting the heads. In case of the absence of the flexure prevention member, there is a problem in that excellent image formations cannot be implemented as a result of the conveyance belt flexing in the printing region.